Ask someone on the street what marketing is and they'll point to an ad on the side of a bus. They'll mention a commercial they saw last night. They might even spit on the floor in disgust and ramble on about "convincing people to buy things they don't need" and "corporate greed" and "chemtrails". If you ask the American Marketing Association, they'll tell you that

Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.

Besides not being very clear, that definition is not very accurate. For example, check out the car used by pest controllers Truly Nolen. It's a yellow VW Beetle with ears. Thats marketing hard at work. But theres no value being offered to anyone. So how can the above definition be true? I'll offer a better definition.

Marketing is not a department. Do you have a marketing department? If not, good. If you do, don't think these are the only people responsible for marketing. Accounting is a department. Marketing isn't. Marketing is something everyone at your company is doing 24/7/365. Just as you cannot not communicate, you cannot not market:

• Every time you answer the phone, it's marketing.
• Every time you send an e-mail, it's marketing.
• Every time someone uses your product, it's marketing.
• Every word you write on your Web site is marketing.
• If you build software, every error message is marketing.
• If you're in the restaurant business, the after-dinner mint is marketing.
• If you're in the retail business, the checkout counter is marketing.
• If you're in a service business, your invoice is marketing.

Recognize that all of these little things are more important than choosing which piece of swag to throw into a conference goodie bag. Marketing isn't just a few individual events. It's the sum total of everything you do.

This is an excerpt from Basecamp's (previously 37signals) seriously awesome book, REWORK. The final sentence is what we are looking for.  

It's the sum total of everything you do.

"So it's marketing if I have catered lunches for my employees,? If we accept Bitcoin? If we have pictures of the team on our website?"

Yes.

"So, what does that mean for my business?"

Everything you do has to be for a reason. It has to be on strategy. It has to make sense for your brand. If you are selling Go Karts, you don't need to write a 10 page professional sales letters to sell your products. You need to show how much fun they are.

Everything you do is communicating something. It's up to you to define what you want to say.